Kentucky Basketball: The Wildcats Beat the Tennessee Volunteers

Is it any coincidence that after Larry Brown spends a week at Kentucky, Brandon Knight finally starts winning games for the Kentucky Wildcats. Not only did he obviously help Brandon Knight but he seems to have rubbed off on the previously point guard DeAndre Liggins.

The game took a dramatic turn of events after Brandon picked up his second foul in the first half and left the game to prevent anymore fouls in the first half. It was very obvious that his presence has become necessary for the Cats to compete in any game.

This shows a lot of potential and excitement for the rest of the season with Brandon Knight finally getting it and taking over games, but it also shows a huge weakness because with Kentucky only playing six players if Brandon goes out of the game we become a very mediocre ball club.

The rest of the Wildcat team is very talented but for whatever reason they seemed very lost out on the court without Knight to guide them.

The matchup problems were still there, DeAndrea shutting down Tobias Harris, Josh Harrelson out hustling Brian Williams, but yet once Brandon Left the game so did our dominance. Kentucky didn’t score in the last 3 minutes of the first half.

By the end of January the voters in the top 25 poll have an idea of who the best teams are in the country with at least two and most of the time three of the top ten schools in that particular poll making it to the final four I was very worried about this years team not maturing in time to make a great post season run.

I wonder now if we can stay healthy we’ll just mature late and get there any way. The Kentucky Wildcats still need Terrance Jones to figure out how to play team ball at this level, but who knows maybe sometime between now and the NCAA tournament something will click with him to make him get it and become an elite college player.

I wrote in a previous article that some little thing said or shown to Brandon Knight might make the difference in him taking his game to the next level. Hopefully Terrance Jones or Doran Lamb will have a similar epiphany.

If you notice not all the Final Four teams in a particular year are in the top ten of the top 25 poll at the end of January, maybe Kentucky can’t get lucky by staying healthy. Staying fresh, this will be difficult with only six players playing the majority of the game. Maybe this Kentucky team will finally take them back to the Final Four.